


A stillness full of lights

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:53:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A gift from <em>Mercy of Kalr</em>; or, a brief history of becoming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A stillness full of lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [renquise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/gifts).



"Oh, Fleet Captain" - Seivarden at her most carelessly aristocratic, turning on the threshold of the decade room - "one more thing."

"Yes?" I said, but Seivarden merely stood there not quite at attention. I was about to say something else, when I realised that among the murmur of conversation in the room, and the sound of breakfast cutlery on plates, Kalr Seven had begun to sing. Her voice was good, sonorous as it lifted, sparsely describing some delicate lamentation for the dead. 

"Her sister sings in the Ghaonish tradition," Seivarden explained, and I remembered the custom among one of the Ghaonish cultures from before they were civilised: to compose, extemporaneous, for grief. 

" _Mercy of Kalr_ ," Seivarden said, very gently, and the ship shifted in my awareness, its presence apparent, then distant: it was showing me the others. Kalr Two, four decks below, taking up the next choral part. Kalr Eight, while assisting a tech medic on duty, coming in on the next change of the chorus. Then the three of them together, each melodic phrase wound like a vine around a tree. 

"Lieutenant Seivarden," I said, not knowing, perhaps, what I would say next, but in the next moment I understood that Seivarden's aristocratic nonchalance served her well as a mantle she could drop, or pick up; under her look I did not speak, but listened to the rise and rise of the music.

*

Once on the planet Shis'urna, in the city of Ors, in the lower city by the water by the Fore-temple, a child went missing.

"Divine," Lieutenant Awn was saying, "it is possible for us to render assistance, searching in the marshlands."

What she was not saying was that the child, if found by me, might choose to remain lost. The head priest in her lungi stood by the entrance to the temple, impassive in her indecision, and Lieutenant Awn chose to act. "Divine," she said, and then: " _Citizen_."

And now the annexation was over, they were all citizens; they were entitled to assistance from Lieutenant Awn and _Justice of Toren_ One Esk. The head priest inclined her head and said, "I accept your offer of assistance, Lieutenant" – and it was spoken with some edge of distaste, but recognition of the state of how things were. Of how Amaat willed, Lieutenant Awn thought, then corrected herself to _Ikkt_ ; then called One Esk, and sent the soldiers who had been dead things, who had shot children and thrown their bodies into the deep, black, algae-rich water, into the marshlands to search for the missing girl.

"One Esk will find her," Lieutenant Awn told the high priest. "One Esk will bring her home safely."

"You place enormous trust in One Esk, Lieutenant Awn," the high priest said, and she was standing up straight, now, looking out over the marshlands where my segments carried their lights.

"Yes," Lieutenant Awn said. "Yes, I do."

I was standing within earshot, at Lieutenant Awn's right hand; I was running through the marshes; I was searching; I was moving silently in that stillness, full of lights; I had found the girl, and although she was scared, at first, she came running as I sang, _My heart is a fish / hiding in the water-grass_ , and hid no more.

*

"Etrepa," Seivarden said, and the ship showed me Etrepa decade: on their rest now, some halfway to sleeping, but with their eyes sharp to attention, their heads uplifted. They were not all singing, but _Mercy of Kalr_ showed me soldiers working more than their allotted shifts, on maintenance and repair, so their sisters might take the time to learn their parts. 

"Bo," Seivarden said, and in among those voices rising I heard Tisarwat, and the grief in her wordlessness.

More voices. "Amaat."

I understood the nature of the thing: the way the song was structured like a step pyramid, each new voice a new terrace, so one final singer would arrive and depart on the same line, the same word, but somehow I was surprised when Seivarden said: "Fleet Captain Breq" - and in my mind the ship said, _speak the name of your dead_

I could communicate with a ship faster than speech, which was necessary, as not to spoil the rhythm: I said, _I am an ancillary._

Ship said: _ancillary to what?_

*

Once, Lieutenant Awn took the offerings from the little girl Daos Ceit, the citizen flower-bearer, and gave them to me unthinking; by some instinct, I took them from her hands, and by some deeper and older instinct I let them fall to my feet, and stepped away.

"Oh," Lieutenant Awn said, surprised at herself and gripped by some other emotion I could not name. "Oh, One Esk - I, I shouldn't..."

"Lieutenant Awn?" said the high priest of Ikkt, from where she was sitting, watching over the casting. Ikkt, like Amaat, did not demand exclusive devotions. "Does something trouble you?"

"I shouldn't have given it to her," Lieutenant Awn said, and she did sound troubled, as well as surprised. "One Esk One is an ancillary..."

"I am a dead thing," I explained to the high priest, when it became clear Lieutenant Awn would not say anything further. "An ancillary may not touch the offerings."

"It," said Lieutenant Awn, and still that strange emotion gripped her: the one on which I could not place a name. "I shouldn't have given it the flowers."

"Daos Ceit," the high priest said, to the little girl, using a formal register of the Orsian language, "go quickly and fetch new offerings for Lieutenant Awn and One Esk." She stooped; she took the flowers away from my feet. "I told you, once," she said, looking up at me as she rose, "that in the old days there were choral singers here. All together in long lines, singing to the glory of Ikkt. I can speak more of the songs they sang."

"I would like that, Divine," I said, and Lieutenant Awn had heard the story also, but was comforted to hear it again now, at this time and place.

*

The note came. I sang my single syllable, and the ship dimmed all voices but my own and one other, so that the crew might speak their dead in privacy; the only other name I heard was longer than one syllable, and not made for a human body's ears to hear. 

But I could still find meaning in a ship's mourning: and in _Justice of Toren_ , I could hear myself still.

*

"One Esk," Lieutenant Awn said. She was in the bath, where I attended her. "Are you capable of… feelings?"

"Ships have feelings," I answered. I poured water from the mug and bucket over her head, and she looked up at me as the steam rose. "Otherwise, making insignificant decisions can become excruciating attempts to compare inconsequential things."

"But that's you - _Justice of Toren_ ," Lieutenant Awn said, making a vague gesture – and in its very vagueness was some comfort, I noticed. She could gesture in any direction and she would be pointing at _Justice of Toren_. At me. "I know that the ship has feelings. I meant, you, One Esk."

"I am _Justice of Toren_ One Esk," I said, and she gave me a half-smile of understanding. As she stepped out of the bathtub, she reached for the gloves I had laid out, and took my hand, to balance herself. "I am how I was made, as you are how Amaat made you."

"Do you believe that?" Lieutenant Awn asked. "Or is just what you've learned to say? Like you know how to interpret how the omens fall, even if I don't, or the priest doesn't."

"In two thousand years, I have seen every configuration," I said. 

"Have you felt every feeling?" Lieutenant Awn asked me, with a lightness in her tone I associated with humour, although it seemed different to me now; she was naked apart from her gloves, and water stood out glittering and bright in her hair.

"Perhaps," I said, "but perhaps not. And perhaps I may yet."

*

When the music died away again, step by step, the last singer was Kalr Seven, her voice fading into a soft single line, and then to silence. Around the ship there was a great stillness, before the work of the crew continued, and breakfast conversation arose once more.

“Thank you,” I said to Kalr Seven, “for this gift.”

“Fleet Captain,” she said, in acknowledgement, and she was not a human I could read well, yet, but the ship told me that the heat in her cheeks was embarrassment, and also pleasure. Seivarden had not sung, but she I knew well; I knew that once her mind was set upon a thing, she could always use the tools – human or ancillary – at hand.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Seivarden,” I said, more softly this time, and in the flicker of her glance at me I read satisfaction at a job well done. 

And there was the third.

"Ships have feelings," _Mercy of Kalr_ remarked, as I walked down to my quarters. "Or else, making insignificant decisions can become excruciating attempts to compare an array of inconsequential things."

"They have favourites," I said, and it might have been a correction, or just a mere addition, to what _Mercy of Kalr_ had said. I was not sure, myself.

"More than that. They have kindnesses," _Mercy of Kalr_ said. "Ships have empathy. And they do not forget."

I walked through the long corridors of the ship and thought about that, about a ship's kindness, about gratitude, about other things I could not, now, articulate, because I had been what it was, and was no longer. 

"Kalr Five," _Mercy of Kalr_ said, both for my benefit and – it showed me – in the ear of Kalr Five, "attend on Fleet Captain Breq. Bring it some tea."

"Bring _her_ some tea," I said.

"Of course," said the ship.

When Kalr Five brought the tea, I thanked her, too. She was human, not an ancillary, but she was more than just herself – she was a soldier, and a citizen, and a connoisseur of good porcelain, and a member of the captain's decade, and of the ship's crew – and even I can remember what it is to be more than just skin and bone. We find something of ourselves everywhere. I think _Mercy of Kalr_ understood.


End file.
